Monthly Archives: June 2007

A program being launched at 10 U.S. airports this year will expand existing identification checks for visitors, including requiring 10 digital fingerprints, but still operate under strict privacy rules, a senior U.S. official said Monday.The border checks could also soon include other biometric data, such as facial and eye retina scans, as the U.S. upgrades security at its ports, airports and border crossings, said P.T. Wright, operations director for the Department of Homeland Security’s US-VISIT Program.Wright, who was in Brussels to explain the new system to EU officials, said the pilot project would be launched later this year, expanding the current program that calls for taking two fingerprints and facial photographs of visitors to the United States.The pilot program will affect travelers from countries participating in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program, as well as those coming from nations where visas are required, he said.

European Union data protection officials have raised privacy concerns in the past about the U.S. system and a similar fingerprint system being set up by EU nations.

Wright said data would be collected on visitors under strict U.S. privacy protection rules. But he added the prints are checked against U.S. security watch lists and that the FBI and the CIA also have access to the prints.

The 10-print scans would be “virtually 100 percent match accurate,” he said.

“We are going to know that that’s you,” Wright said. Adding other biometric identifiers — such as facial or retinal scans — could help better rule out fraud, he said.

The current two-fingerprint arrival system is being used in 115 airports, 15 seaports and 154 land border checks. About 100 million fingerprints have been taken so far, and more than 34,000 people whose names showed up on U.S. watch lists were denied entry, Wright said.

So I turn on the telly this morning and find breathless CNN anchors hyperventilating over the nuclear suicide car weapon of mass destruction discovered smoldering outside of a London nightclub. One report from the scene notes that:

London police were contacted when witnesses saw a Mercedes being driven erratically near London West End night club Tiger Tiger, and the driver jumped out of the automobile and ran away. The car was reported to have two gasoline canisters and be full of nails.

Explosives officers discovered the fuel and nails attached to a “potential means of detonation,” inside the vehicle. Officers “courageously” disabled the trigger by hand, he said. Security sources told CNN that the “relatively crude device” in the first car contained at least 200 liters, or about 50 gallons, of fuel in canisters.

You know what you call a vehicle with 50 gallons of gas? A Cadillac Escalade. The media meltdown over this incident is simply shameful.

For starters, gasoline is not a high explosive. If we were talking 50 pounds of Semtex or the Al Qaeda standby, TATP, I would be impressed. Those are real high explosives with a detonation rate in excess of 20,000 feet per second. Gasoline can explode (just ask former owners of a Ford Pinto) but it is first and foremost an incendiary. If the initial reports are true, the clown driving the Mercedes was a rank amateur when it comes to constructing an Improvised Explosive Device aka IED. Unlike a Hollywood flick the 50 gallons of gas would not have shredded the Mercedes into lethal chunks of flying shrapenal.

The fact that “officers courageously disabled the trigger by hand” coupled with the report of the smoke in the car leads me to believe that the mad London “bomber” tried to construct a Molotov cocktail of sorts and lit a cloth fuze. Fortunately he left the windows in the car up and there was not enough oxygen to really get the fire going. Looks like the brave British police reached in and snuffed the flame.

Judging from the overreaction to this non-incident I think we can safely conclude that Osama Bin Laden will remain holed up in Pakistan and let the fear mongers at CNN, MSNBC, and FOX do the dirty business of scaring the shit out of people.

UPDATE: Ahh, the panic continues. Yuppie terrorists are on the loose. Now we’re being told there are two cars (both Mercedes I might add) with a Rube Goldberg contraption consisting of propane tanks, some petrol, a light bulb (or maybe light bulb filaments), etc. A propane tank explosion makes a hell of a noise but does not create widespread shrapnel dispersion. Busted eardrums and broken glass are more likely. Getting these tanks to explode is difficult. The ones I have witnessed occurred when a house under construction caught on fire. But there is nothing in two 25lb propane tanks inside a Mercedes that will detonate with sufficient force to shred the automobile and send hundreds to meet their Allah, God, Buddha, or whatever. Still a crock of hype and over-reaction. Let the police do their job. Investigate the culprits and get these nitwits out of circulation before they harm themselves.

… they noticed a silver Mercedes being driven erratically close to the Tiger Tiger nightclub in the Haymarket, near Piccadilly, at around 1:30am.The driver skidded along the road and crashed the vehicle into rubbish bins that were standing on the pavement before getting out and running away.

YYC: Either silver Mercedes-es are very common in London, or somebody was trying to draw attention. And just in case nobody noticed, drove erratically (Telegraph) and made some noise with it and then ran away conspicuously. They just don’t make terrorists like they used to, and maybe they never did.

There are lots of photos at SkyNews, and lots of yatter about a “massive bomb” but nothing that will tell you anything. Eyewitnesses saw nails on the floor and gas cannisters. That’ll do it allright. Nails on the floor and gas cannisters. A “potentially viable explosive device” (The Age) – do they mean like gatorade is?

Note, SkyNews left off the word “potentially” in their video report. They do love to help support the “threat level”.

Note, The Age also comes right out and calls it a “bomb”, says the car was light green and “Police played down media reports that the bomb was “massive”“.

Apparently, the nightclub bouncers walked over to the car and looked inside. Would they really have done that if the car had been “smoking”? (See TimesOnline below)

Amazingly, the police just walked right up to the “smoking” vehicle and examined it. Surely that was a break from bomb squad protocol.TimesOnline embellishes with a whole nother scenario for what got the vehicle reported, saying that “police had initially been notified when an ambulance crew called to attend to an unrelated incident in the Tiger Tiger club saw smoke coming from the car.”

They also put in a plug for the plethora of surveillance cameras throughout the city, saying that “the camera should pick him up getting out of the car. It shouldn’t be long before they start putting out images.” and that the vehicle’s path could probably be tracked throughout London because of all the cameras.

They go on to say “Al Qaeda” is “believed” to be planning more attacks and they plan to attack women because they hate that they frequent nightclubs.

They add that “intelligence analysts” thought an attack was “highly likely” and that spotchecks were being done on cars prior to this incident.

TimesOnline reminds its readers that “a number of Islamist extremist terrorists were imprisoned for planning several major terror attacks, including a bomb attack on London’s Ministry of Sound nightclub.”

But wait !! – Guardian: Scotland Yard’s head of counter-terrorism, Peter Clarke said: “There is no intelligence whatsoever that we were going to be attacked in this way.”